


Don't You Feel Bad?

by DashFlintceschi



Category: Bring Me The Horizon, You Me At Six
Genre: Dan Matt and Tom are trying to figure out where he buried his victims, Gen, Josh is a serial killer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5026405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DashFlintceschi/pseuds/DashFlintceschi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No, actually, Josh doesn't feel bad, not in the slightest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't You Feel Bad?

**Author's Note:**

> This is apparently what happens when I get Loverboy stuck in my head while watching NCIS.

Detective Inspector Dan Flint growls slightly as he slams the photos down on the table, glaring at the smirking man across from him.

“Max Helyer, Oliver Sykes, Lee Malia, Matthew Kean, Matthew Nicholls, Christopher Miller and Jordan Fish. All missing, all presumed murdered. All were last seen highly intoxicated, with you. Want to explain that to me?” He demands, and the man, Joshua Franceschi, smirks more.

“They weren’t intoxicated, they were drugged. I bought them a drink, then slipped a mixture of Valium, Rohypnol, and Gamma-Hydroxybutyrate into that drink, then, once the drugs began to take effect, I pretended I was taking them home, took them into the woods, and then I killed them. Then I buried them in shallow graves all over the county,” he tells him calmly.

DI Flint is surprised he got a confession so easily, but then he gets annoyed. He leaves the room for a minute, then comes back with a map of Surrey.

“Show me exactly where you buried them,” he demands, and Josh laughs softly.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, Detective Inspector. What I’m going to do is, I will give you a clue as to where one of them is buried. When you figure it out and find the body, come back, and I will give you the next clue. Max is near the benevolent terrestrial gastropod. Come back when you’ve found him, and I’ll give you what you need to find Oliver,” Josh instructs, and before DI Flint can say anything, the door bursts open and his partner grabs Josh by the front of his jacket.

“Stop fucking around! You think this is funny?! Tell me where the fuck my brother is!” DI Flint manages to drag his screaming and cursing friend from the room at that point, then leans against the door with a sigh.

“My partner. Detective Inspector Sykes. Oliver’s younger brother. Now, why don’t you tell me where Oliver and the others are, so we can give their families some closure?” He tries, but Josh just smirks.

“Max is near the benevolent terrestrial gastropod. When you find him, I will give you what you need to find Oliver,” he repeats slowly and clearly, and Dan sighs, standing straight so he can open the door and slide around it.

He goes into the observation room attached to the interrogation room they’re holding Josh in, smiling weakly at Matt as he hands him his mug, which Matt just finished filling with hot, strong coffee. He glances over at Tom, who’s glaring at Josh through the glass.

“Is he really doing this?” He spits, and Dan sighs with a shrug.

“Seems so. I think the best thing we can do is leave him to stew in there for an hour or two while we do some research, see if we can’t figure out what the fuck he’s talking about,” he suggests, and both his partners nod and follow him out of the room.

It takes a while, and they try asking Josh twice more, to no avail, but in the end, Tom comes up with something.

“Ok, so, he said ‘benevolent terrestrial gastropod’, right?” He pauses and looks to the both of them for confirmation. When they both nod, he continues. “Right, so, I’ve looked everywhere, and the best I can guess, benevolent is a synonym of compassion, and a quick Google search has told me that a terrestrial gastropod is a slug, and just off Weybridge high street is a charity called Compassion UK, and a pub called The Slug And Lettuce, so I think we should try there,” he tells them, and they both nod with relieved smiles.

They consider asking Josh for confirmation first, but quickly realise they won’t get an answer out of him anyway, so they head out without going near the interrogation room. When they get there, they’re disappointed to find a paved carpark. They’re just about to give up and go back to the drawing board, when Dan realises that there are a few small parts that have grass on them. They get the search team to start digging in those areas, and in less than twenty minutes, they have Max Helyer’s mostly decomposed body in the coroner’s van.

They go straight back to the station, and Dan goes into the interrogation room, slamming a photo of the patch of grass where they’d found Max onto the table.

“Very good, Detective Inspector. That was much faster than I expected. This one’s a little harder, now. Oliver is one kilometre from the cow pen, under a tree with the symbol of Amenta carved into it. Good luck,” that goddamned smirk is back, and Dan wants to punch it off of his smug face. He can’t though, so he settles for glaring at Josh, spinning on his heel and storming from the room.

After three days of researching and looking everywhere, they’re still no closer to figuring out where he buried Oliver. They’re all sleep deprived and frustrated, and Tom’s grief and lack of closure are about to send him spiraling into a nervous breakdown. So Dan does the one thing he swore he’d never do. He has an officer bring Josh up to an interrogation room, and he begs. 

He sits down across from Josh with what he thinks is his ninth cup of coffee in four hours.

“Still no luck, Detective Inspector? It’s starting to show, you look awful,” Josh comments mildly, and Dan sighs. He can’t even find the energy to be pissed off at this guy anymore.

“Please, just tell us where he is. I know you don’t care that his family is grieving, that his brother is close to a nervous breakdown, or even that it’s been over a week since I’ve been home or seen my own family, but please, just tell us where he is,” he begs, already knowing the answer when Josh’s smirk grows.

“If I did that, then what would be the point of it all?” He asks softly, and Dan frowns.

“I’m sorry?” He asks in confusion, and Josh laughs softly.

“That was why I killed them. To see how long it would take you to find them,” he tells him, and Dan sees red. He jumps to his feet and throws himself around the table, grabbing Josh, throwing him against the wall and beating him to a pulp.

When Dan calms down, he doesn’t even regret it. He turns from Josh’s crumpled form and goes to leave, but freezes when Josh begins to laugh, a soft, cold, empty laugh that turns Dan’s insides to ice. He almost runs from the room, that laughter ringing in his ears and making him shiver. He’s even more determined to figure out the sick bastard’s riddles now.

Finally, nine hours later, Matt’s head shoots up from where he’d been poring over old books and maps.

“Pen is the Welsh word for head,” he announces, unable to articulate much more as his brain tries to catch up to itself.

“That’s really interesting, mate, but is it relative?” Dan asks tiredly, and Matt nods.

“Yes, it is. Cow pen. Leather is made from cowskin. Leatherhead,” he realises, and they jump up, Tom calling out for a search team to follow them as they almost run to the lift.

They consider splitting the search team into four and sending them in every direction, since Josh didn’t give them that, but Matt reckons the best place to start is the Mole Gap Trail from Leatherhead to Dorking. They spread out as far as they can and start walking the trail, checking every tree for the mark, an Egyptian symbol for the Underworld that kind of looks like an umbrella with a second, shorter line coming from the bottom.

They’ve gone exactly 0.6 of a mile, one kilometre, just as Josh said, when a member of the search team calls out, and they all rush to her. Once again, it’s an almost obscenely shallow grave, and they find Oliver’s body quickly. When the partially decomposed remains are moved from the ground to a body bag, Dan expects Tom to break down, start crying, anything. All he does is take a deep breath, nod, and turn away. Dan and Matt go to him, each squeezing a shoulder comfortingly.

“You alright? You know you can take time off, if you need it,” Matt checks softly, and Tom nods.

“I know, but I’m fine. I’ve known for three months that he was dead. I didn’t need to find him to confirm it, I could just feel it. This is more like relief, we’ve got him back, I can say goodbye properly now, give him a decent burial,” he tells them, and they nod, each wrapping an arm around him as they walk back to the road.

They decide to go home for the night, all of them needing the rest, and Tom needing to break the news to the rest of his family. When Dan goes into the interrogation room the next morning, still exhausted but finding it much easier to think straight, Josh smiles at him through severely cut and bruised lips.

“Feeling better?” He asks mildly, and Dan scowls.

“We found Oliver. Now tell me where Lee Malia is,” he growls, and Josh laughs slightly.

“The game’s not over yet, Detective Inspector. You know the drill, I give you a clue, you use it to find Lee. He cried, y’know. The others didn’t. Max tried to talk me out of it; Oliver accepted it very quickly with barely a whimper; Lee cried; Matt lost consciousness from the drugs before we even got to the woods; the other Matt seemed too used to being drunk to really register what was happening; Chris tried to bargain his way out; and Jordan tried to make me see him as a real person, telling me about his wife and their dog and his friends and his job. Pathetic, really. Anyway, Lee is where eggshells, an old coin and Prince Charming meet a significant drop,” he tells him, and Dan is so angry at how casually he describes their last moments, that he almost misses the clue.

He catches it, though, and immediately leaves, trying to ignore the images in his mind. Oliver was a good friend of his, had been since he and Tom had started working together five years ago. Max, Lee, both Matt’s, Chris and Jordan feel like people he’d known, as a result of how much research he’d done into their lives and final moments. Their faces are permanently seared into his brain, and now it’s all he can do to stop his mind from forming images of Josh’s words. He walks over to his desk, where Matt and Tom are waiting on him, watching him intently as he gets closer, frowning at the confused expression on his face.

“What weird bullshit did he come out with now?” Tom asks softly, and Dan snorts.

“Lee is where eggshells, an old coin and Prince Charming meet a significant drop,” he repeats, and they both frown.

“My first thought is Guilford, but I don’t know how Prince Charming comes into it,” Matt mutters, and they both look at him, their expressions clearly asking for an explanation. “Well, there’s a crossroad in Guilford, the four streets are One Tree Hill Road, Halfpenny Lane, White Lane, and Longdown Road, so eggshells is eggshell white, halfpenny is an old coin, Longdown is a significant drop, but I can’t figure out how Prince Charming and One Tree Hill go together,” he rattles off, and Dan drops down into his chair, logging onto his computer and doing a quick Google search.

“You’re right, it is the place. Chad Michael Murray was in One Tree Hill and A Cinderella Story, so there’s the link, let’s go,” he tells them quickly, grabbing his coat as they get another search team and leave.

The crossroad is paved, so they start by having the grass at the sides of the four roads dug up. They find what’s left of Lee right beside the road where White Lane meets Halfpenny Lane. The area is open and exposed, lit by several streetlights, and Dan can’t help but wonder how the hell Josh did it without being seen. Then he reminds himself that Josh is a psychopath or sociopath or something in between, and stops thinking about it.

They get stuck with Josh’s next clue for over a week. Matt Kean is between the bird of prey and the Gryllidae. Finally, after much research and even more scanning of Google maps, Tom figures out that it’s probably Elmbridge Eagles Rugby League Club and Esher Cricket Club. The only problem is, several fields and about twenty houses lie between the two. After another week of knocking on doors and securing warrants, they finally find Matt’s body in some poor bugger’s back garden. As they watch the body bag being moved into the van, Dan has to resist the urge to threaten to arrest the homeowner, just to get her to stop screaming at the top of her lungs about her poor kids being traumatised. They aren’t even home, and they had no idea the body was there, so how they’re traumatised, Dan will never know.

They figure out the next clue relatively easily, but actually retrieving the body is more difficult. The clue was ‘Matt is near the underground structure of Rebecca’s son, at the reorientation of the curdled milk’. The meanings have been slightly butchered in a few places, but it’s obvious, to Dan at least, that he means the River Wey Navigation at Jacobs Well. The hard part comes when they have to get permission to dredge that part of the river. Especially since they don’t have a precise location to dredge.

While they’re waiting, Matt tries to get Josh to give them the clue to find Chris, since technically they have found Matt Nicholls, they just can’t get to him. Josh refuses, though, insisting that he won’t give the next clue until they actually have the body. He changes tactics then, trying to get Josh to give him a more precise location, so they can get the warrant quicker. He surprisingly does, telling Matt they should look near the phyllosilicate structure.

The clue turns out to be what they needed. Clay Lane passes over the river twice, but only once over the part that’s considered the navigation. With that information, it only takes them an hour to get the warrant. Unfortunately, the warrant doesn’t let them close the road, so there are a lot of people standing on the bridge watching as the divers drag the body out of the water. Tom notices several flashes, so while the body is being loaded into the coroner’s van, the three of them head up to the bridge. It’s funny how quickly a badge can make someone delete a photo.

As soon as they get back to the station, Tom goes into the interrogation room.

“Alright, we found Matt, now where’s Chris?” He demands, and Josh smiles, leaning back in his chair.

“Well, you are much less patient than your partners, aren’t you?” He comments, and Tom scowls.

“Yes, I am, now tell me,” he growls, and Josh shrugs.

“I’m not sure. I was somewhat drunk myself that night. I can give you a general area, but very little in specifics,” he tells him, and Tom slams his fists down on the table.

“Don’t bullshit me. You’re far too meticulous to make mistakes or forget something like that,” he insists, and Josh grins.

“Alright, you got me. I don’t want to give you specifics, so I’ll give you the small amount I am willing to give. He is between the rigid viridian and abyssal fissure,” he admits, and Tom snarls.

“Why do you insist on these fucking riddles?” He demands to know, and Josh gives a casual one-sided shrug.

“It’s fun. I like knowing you’re struggling with them,” he replies, and Tom knows the chances of that being the truth are 50-50. He doesn’t have enough control to continue asking, though, so he just sneers and storms out.

By the time he gets back to his desk, Matt and Dan have figured it out.

“Seriously, half the time, the only way I can figure out what the fuck he’s on about is by using a thesaurus,” Dan announces as Tom sits down.

“Was that the case this time?” He asks, and they both nod.

“Yeah, rigid viridian is Frimley Green; I’m assuming he misread it or intentionally mangled it to ‘firmly’; and abyssal fissure is Deepcut. He said that Chris is somewhere between the two, only problem is, it’s just over a mile between them, and a lot of it is heavily wooded, so it might take a while,” Dan explains, and Tom sighs, but nods and stands up as they head out yet again.

It’s actually pretty easy to find Chris. Within five hours of starting, the sniffer dogs find something on the grounds of the Holly Lodge Guest House, just outside of Frimley Green. It takes only five minutes to uncover the almost perfectly intact remains of Chris Miller.

Josh drags out the last clue, only giving them one word each day. Eventually, they get it, and start work on finding Jordan. Finally, they figure out that the ‘trivial inconvenience’ is Downside Common, a small park in Downside, a village 6 miles from Weybridge. Josh was ‘gracious’ enough to give them a specific this time, telling them to start with the North corner of the triangular field.

They realise he was lying, though, when the entire Northern corner of the park has been dug up and there’s no sign of Jordan. They keep looking, and eventually find him in the Western corner.

When they get back to the station, Dan goes down to the cells, to let Josh know they’d found Jordan, and that now that he’s no longer useful, he’ll go on trial and spend the rest of his life in prison. When he gets there, though, the cell door is open, and the officer who’d been guarding Josh is lying on the floor inside the cell, surrounded by his own blood from the wide tear in his throat.

Dan immediately raises the alarm, and the station and surrounding area are thoroughly searched. It seems he’s long gone, though. Once the search is over, Dan goes home to his small, empty flat. He likes it that way, though. The rest of his life is so large and busy, the small and quiet of his flat are a sanctuary.

He doesn’t bother switching the lights on when he goes in, he’s well accustomed to moving through the small rooms in the dark, and he’s going straight to bed anyway. He’s halfway across the living room when the sound of a lighter behind him makes him freeze.

“You shouldn’t smoke, it’s bad for you,” Dan spins around at Josh’s soft, casual comment, pulling his gun from his hip as he goes.

“I’d say you’re worse for me than smoking,” Dan retorts grimly as he levels his gun at Josh. Rather than making him pause, the loaded weapon aimed at his forehead makes him give a feral grin.

“Come on, now, we both know you’ve never used that,” he admonishes mockingly, and Dan’s lip curls into a snarl.

“First time for everything. Try me,” he growls, and though he’s surprised when Josh takes him up on it, he doesn’t let it show as he fires, hitting Josh in the chest three times before he’s made it halfway across the room.

As Josh coughs and splutters, he raises his hand and motions for Dan to come to him. Dan’s hesitant, but eventually decides to comply, moving closer, but not too close. He’s still close enough for Josh’s final words to haunt him, though.

“Now you’ll never know where I buried the others.”


End file.
